Voltaire his just meed of praise. There were streaks of gold in the base
alloy of that character of his. He burned with magnanimous heat against
the hideous doctrine and practice of ecclesiastical persecution. Carlyle
says of Voltaire, that he "spent his best efforts, and as many still
think, successfully, in assaulting the Christian religion." This, true
though it be, is liable to be falsely understood. It was not against the
Christian religion, as the Christian religion really is, but rather
against the Christian religion as the Roman hierarchy misrepresented it,
that Voltaire ostensibly directed his efforts. "You are right," wrote he
to his henchman D'Alembert, in 1762, "in assuming that I speak of
superstition only; for as to the Christian religion, I respect it and
love it, as you do." This distinction of Voltaire's, with whatever
degree of simple sincerity on his part made, ought to be remembered in
his favor, when his memorable motto, "_Ecrasez l'Infame_," is
interpreted and applied. He did not mean Jesus Christ by _l'Infame_; he
did not mean the Christian religion by it; he did not even mean the
Christian Church by it; he meant the oppressive despotism and the crass
obscurantism of the Roman-Catholic hierarchy. At least, this is what he
would have said that he meant, what in fact he substantially did say
that he meant, when incessantly reiterating, in its various forms, his
watchword, "_Ecrasez l'Infame_," "_Ecrasons l'Infame_,"--"Crush the
wretch!" "Let us crush the wretch!" His blows were aimed, perhaps, at
"superstition;" but they really fell, in the full half of their effect,
on Christianity itself. Whether Voltaire regretted this, whether he
would in his heart have had it otherwise, may well, in spite of any
protestation from him of love for Christianity, be doubted. Still, it is
never, in judgment of Voltaire, to be forgotten that the organized
Christianity which he confronted, was in large part a system justly
hateful to the true and wise lover whether of God or of man. That system
he did well in fighting. Carnal indeed were the weapons with which he
fought it; and his victory over it was a carnal victory, bringing, on
the whole, but slender net advantage, if any such advantage at all, to
the cause of final truth and light. The French Revolution, with its
excesses and its horrors, was perhaps the proper, the legitimate, the
necessary, fruit of resistance such as was Voltaire's, in fundamental
spirit, to the evils in church and in state against which he conducted
so gallantly his life-long campaign.
But though we thus bring in doubt the work of Voltaire, both as to the
purity of its motive, and as to the value of its fruit, we should wrong
our sense of justice to ourselves if we permitted our readers to suppose
us blind to the generous things that this arch-infidel did on behalf of
the suffering and the oppressed. Voltaire more than once wielded that
pen of his, the most dreaded weapon in Europe, like a knight sworn to
take on himself the championship of the forlornest of causes. There is
the historic case of Jean Calas at Toulouse, Protestant, an old man of
near seventy, broken on the wheel, as suspected, without evidence, and
against accumulated impossibilities, of murdering his own son, a young
man of about thirty, by hanging him. Voltaire took up the case, and
pleaded it to the common sense, and to the human feeling, of France,
with immense effectiveness. It is, in truth, Voltaire's advocacy of
righteousness, in this instance of incredible wrong, that has made the
instance itself immortal. His part in the case of Calas, though the most
signal, is not the only, example of Voltaire's literary knighthood. He
hated oppression, and he loved liberty, for himself and for all men,
with a passion as deep and as constant as any passion of which nature
had made Voltaire capable. If the liberty that he loved was
fundamentally liberty as against God no less than as against men, and
if the oppression that he hated was fundamentally the oppression of
being put under obligation to obey Christ as lord of life and of
thought, this was something of which, probably, Voltaire never had a
clear consciousness.
We have now indicated what was most admirable in Voltaire's personal
character. On the whole, he was far from being an admirable man. He was
vain, he was shallow, he was frivolous, he was deceitful, he was
voluptuous, he fawned on the great, he abased himself before them, he
licked the dust on which they stood. "_Trajan, est-il content?_" ("Is
Trajan satisfied?")--this, asked, in nauseous adulation, and nauseous
self-abasement, by Voltaire of Louis XV., so little like Trajan in
character--is monumental. The occasion was the production of a piece of
Voltaire's written at the instance of Louis XV.'s mistress, the infamous
Madame de Pompadour. The king, for answer, simply gorgonized the poet
with a stony Bourbon stare.
But, taken altogether, Voltaire's life was a great success. He got on in
the world, was rich, was fortunate, was famous, was gay, if he was not
happy. He had his friendship with the great Frederick of Prussia, who
filled for his false French flatterer a return cup of sweetness,
cunningly mixed with exceeding bitterness. His death was an appropriate
_coup de theatre_, a felicity of finish to such a life, quite beyond the
reach of art. He came back to Paris, whence he had been an exile,
welcomed with a triumph transcending the triumph of a conqueror. They
made a great feast for him, a feast of flattery, in the theatre. The old
man was drunk with delight. The delight was too much for him. It
literally killed him. It was as if a favorite actress should be quite
smothered to death on the stage, under flowers thrown in excessive
profusion at her feet.
Let Carlyle's sentence be our epigraph on Voltaire:--
"No great Man.... Found always at the top, less by power in
swimming than by lightness in floating."
XVI.
ROUSSEAU.
1712-1778.
There are two Rousseaus in French literature. At least, there was a
first, until the second effaced him, and became the only.
We speak, of course, in comparison, and hyperbolically. J. B. Rousseau
is still named as a lyric poet of the time of Louis XIV. But when
Rousseau, without initials, is spoken of, it is always Jean Jacques
Rousseau that is meant.
Jean Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most squalid, as it certainly is
one of the most splendid, among French literary names. The squalor
belongs chiefly to the man, but the splendor is wholly the writer's.
There is hardly another example in the world's literature of a union so
striking of these opposites.
Rousseau's life he has himself told, in the best, the worst, and the
most imperishable, of his books, the "Confessions." This book is one to
which the adjective charming attaches, in a peculiarly literal sense of
the word. The spell, however, is repellent as well as attractive. But
the attraction of the style asserts and pronounces itself only the more,
in triumph over the much there is in the matter to disgust and revolt.
It is quite the most offensive, and it is well-nigh the most
fascinating, book that we know.
The "Confessions" begin as follows:--
I purpose an undertaking that never had an example, and whose
execution never will have an imitator. I would exhibit to my
fellows a man in all the truth of nature, and that man--myself.
Myself alone. I know my own heart, and I am acquainted with men. I
am made unlike any one I have ever seen,--I dare believe unlike any
living being. If no better than, I am at least different from,
others. Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mould
wherein I was cast, can be determined only after having read me.
Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I will come, with this
book in my hand, and present myself before the Sovereign Judge. I
will boldly proclaim: Thus have I acted, thus have I thought, such
was I. With equal frankness have I disclosed the good and the evil.
I have omitted nothing bad, added nothing good; and if I have
happened to make use of some unimportant ornament, it has, in every
case, been simply for the purpose of filling up a void occasioned
by my lack of memory. I may have taken for granted as true what I
knew to be possible, never what I knew to be false. Such as I was,
I have exhibited myself,--despicable and vile, when so; virtuous,
generous, sublime, when so. I have unveiled my interior being, such
as Thou, Eternal Existence, hast beheld it. Assemble around me the
numberless throng of my fellow-mortals; let them listen to my
confessions, let them blush at my depravities, let them shrink
appalled at my miseries. Let each of them, in his turn, with equal
sincerity, lay bare his heart at the foot of thy throne, and then
let a single one tell thee, if he dare, _I was better than that
man_.
Notwithstanding our autobiographer's disavowal of debt to example for
the idea of his "Confessions," it seems clear that Montaigne here was at
least inspiration, if not pattern, to Rousseau. But Rousseau resolved to
do what Montaigne had done, more ingenuously and more courageously than
Montaigne had done it. This writer will make himself his subject, and
then treat his subject with greater frankness than any man before him
ever used about himself, or than any man after him would ever use. He
undoubtedly succeeded in his attempt. His frankness, in fact, is so
forward and eager, that it is probably even inventive of things
disgraceful to himself. Montaigne makes great pretence of telling his
own faults, but you observe that he generally chooses rather amiable
faults of his own to tell. Rousseau's morbid vulgarity leads him to
disclose traits in himself, of character or of behavior, that, despite
whatever contrary wishes on your part, compel your contempt of the man.
And it is for the man who confesses, almost more than for the man who is
guilty, that you feel the contempt.
The "Confessions" proceed:--
I was born at Geneva, in 1712, of Isaac Rousseau and Susannah
Bernard, citizens.... I came into the world weak and sickly. I cost
my mother her life, and my birth was the first of my misfortunes.
I never learned how my father supported his loss, but I know that
he remained ever after inconsolable.... When he used to say to me,
"Jean Jacques, let us speak of your mother," my usual reply was,
"Well, father, we'll cry, then," a reply which would instantly
bring the tears to his eyes. "Ah!" he would exclaim with agitation,
"give me her back, console me for her loss, fill up the void she
has left in my soul. Could I love thee thus wert thou but _my_
son?" Forty years after having lost her he expired in the arms of a
second wife, but with the name of the first on his lips, and her
image engraven on his heart.
Such were the authors of my being. Of all the gifts Heaven had
allotted them, a feeling heart was the only one I had inherited.
While, however, this had been the source of their happiness, it
became the spring of all my misfortunes.
"A feeling heart!" That expression tells the literary secret of
Rousseau. It is hardly too much to say that Rousseau was the first
French writer to write with his heart; but heart's blood was the ink in
which almost every word of Rousseau's was written. This was the spring
of his marvellous power. Rousseau:--
My mother had left a number of romances. These father and I betook
us to reading during the evenings. At first the sole object was, by
means of entertaining books, to improve me in reading; but, ere
long, the charm became so potent, that we read turn about without
intermission, and passed whole nights in this employment. Never
could we break up till the end of the volume. At times my father,
hearing the swallows of a morning, would exclaim, quite ashamed of
himself, "Come, let's to bed; I'm more of a child than you are!"
The elder Rousseau was right respecting himself. And such a father would
almost necessarily have such a child. Jean Jacques Rousseau is to be
judged tenderly for his faults. What birth and what breeding were his!
The "Confessions" go on:--
I soon acquired, by this dangerous course, not only an extreme
facility in reading and understanding, but, for my age, a quite
unprecedented acquaintance with the passions. I had not the
slightest conception of things themselves, at a time when the whole
round of sentiments was already perfectly familiar to me. I had
apprehended nothing--I had felt all.
Some hint now of other books read by the boy:--
With the summer of 1719 the romance-reading terminated.... "The
History of the Church and Empire" by Lesueur, Bossuet's
"Dissertation on Universal History," Plutarch's "Lives," Nani's
"History of Venice," Ovid's "Metamorphoses," "La Bruyere,"
Fontenelle's "Worlds," his "Dialogues of the Dead," and a few
volumes of Moliere, were transported into my father's shop; and I
read them to him every day during his work. For this employment I
acquired a rare, and, for my age, perhaps unprecedented, taste.
Plutarch especially became my favorite reading. The pleasure which
I found in incessantly reperusing him, cured me in some measure of
the romance madness; and I soon came to prefer Agesilaus, Brutus,
and Aristides, to Orondates, Artemenes, and Juba. From these
interesting studies, joined to the conversations to which they gave
rise with my father, resulted that free, republican spirit, that
haughty and untamable character, fretful of restraint or
subjection, which has tormented me my life long, and that in
situations the least suitable for giving it play. Incessantly
occupied with Rome and Athens, living, so to speak, with their
great men, born myself the citizen of a republic [Geneva], the son
of a father with whom patriotism was the ruling passion, I caught
the flame from him--I imagined myself a Greek or a Roman, and
became the personage whose life I was reading.
On such food of reading and of reverie, young Rousseau's imagination and
sentiment battened, while his reason and his practical sense starved and
died within him. Unconsciously thus in part was formed the dreamer of
the "Emile" and of "The Social Contract." Another glimpse of the
home-life--if home-life such experience can be called--of this
half-orphan, homeless Genevan boy:--
I had a brother, my elder by seven years.... He fell into the ways
of debauchery, even before he was old enough to be really a
libertine.... I remember once when my father was chastising him
severely and in anger, that I impetuously threw myself between
them, clasping him tightly. I thus covered him with my body,
receiving the blows that were aimed at him; and I held out so
persistently in this position, that whether softened by my cries
and tears, or fearing that I should get the worst of it, my father
was forced to forgive him. In the end my brother turned out so bad
that he ran away and disappeared altogether.
It is pathetic--Rousseau's attempted contrast following, between the
paternal neglect of his older brother and the paternal indulgence of
himself:--
If this poor lad was carelessly brought up, it was quite otherwise
with his brother.... My desires were so little excited, and so
little crossed, that it never came into my head to have any. I can
solemnly aver, that, till the time when I was bound to a master, I
never knew what it was to have a whim.
Poor lad! "Never knew what it was to have a whim!" It well might be,
however--his boy's life all one whim uncrossed, unchecked; no contrast
of saving restraint, to make him know that he was living by whim alone!
The "Confessions" truly say:--
Thus commenced the formation or the manifestation in me of that
heart at once so haughty and so tender, of that effeminate and yet
unconquerable character which, ever vacillating between courage and
weakness, between virtue and yielding to temptation, has all along
set me in contradiction to myself, and has resulted in my failing
both of abstinence and enjoyment, both of prudence and pleasure.
The half-orphan becomes orphan entire, not by the death, but by the
withdrawing, of the father. That father, having been accused of a
misdemeanor, "preferred," Rousseau somewhat vaguely says, "to quit
Geneva for the remainder of his life, rather than give up a point
wherein honor and liberty appeared to him compromised." Jean Jacques was
sent to board with a parson, who taught him Latin, and, along with
Latin, supplied, Rousseau scornfully says, "all the accompanying mass of
paltry rubbish styled education." He adds:--
The country was so entirely new to me, that I could never grow
weary in my enjoyment of it; and I acquired so strong a liking for
it, that it has never become extinguished.
Young Jean Jacques was at length apprenticed to an engraver. He
describes the contrast of his new situation and the effect of the
contrast upon his own character and career:--
I learned to covet in silence, to dissemble, to dissimulate, to
lie, and at last to steal,--a propensity for which I had never
hitherto had the slightest inclination, and of which I have never
since been able quite to cure myself....
My first theft was the result of complaisance, but it opened the
door to others which had not so laudable a motive.
My master had a journeyman named M. Verrat.... [He] took it into
his head to rob his mother of some of her early asparagus and sell
it, converting the proceeds into some extra good breakfasts. As he
did not wish to expose himself, and not being very nimble, he
selected me for this expedition.... Long did I stickle, but he
persisted. I never could resist kindness, so I consented. I went
every morning to the garden, gathered the best of the asparagus,
and took it to "the Molard," where some good creature, perceiving
that I had just been stealing it, would insinuate that little fact,
so as to get it the cheaper. In my terror I took whatever she chose
to give me, and carried it to M. Verrat.
This little domestic arrangement continued for several days before
it came into my head to rob the robber, and tithe M. Verrat for the
proceeds of the asparagus.... I thus learned that to steal was,
after all, not so very terrible a thing as I had conceived; and ere
long I turned this discovery to so good an account, that nothing I
had an inclination for could safely be left within my reach....
And now, before giving myself over to the fatality of my destiny,
let me, for a moment, contemplate what would naturally have been my
lot had I fallen into the hands of a better master. Nothing was
more agreeable to my tastes, nor better calculated to render me
happy, than the calm and obscure condition of a good artisan, more
especially in certain lines, such as that of an engraver at
Geneva.... In my native country, in the bosom of my religion, of my
family, and my friends, I should have led a life gentle and
uncheckered as became my character, in the uniformity of a pleasing
occupation and among connections dear to my heart. I should have
been a good Christian, a good citizen, a good father, a good
friend, a good artisan, and a good man in every respect. I should
have loved my station; it may be I should have been an honor to it:
and after having passed an obscure and simple, though even and
happy, life, I should peacefully have departed in the bosom of my
kindred. Soon, it may be, forgotten, I should at least have been
regretted as long as the remembrance of me survived.
Instead of this... what a picture am I about to draw!
Thus ends the first book of the "Confessions."
The picture Rousseau is "about to draw" has in it a certain Madame de
Warens for a principal figure. (Apprentice Jean Jacques has left his
master, and entered on a vagabond life.) This lady is a character very
difficult for us Protestant Americans in our contrasted society to
conceive as real or as possible. She kept a house of, what shall we call
it? detention, for souls doubtfully in the way of being reclaimed from
Protestant error into the bosom of the Roman-Catholic Church. She was
herself a Roman-Catholic convert from Protestantism. She had forsaken a
husband, not loved, and was living on a bounty from King Victor Amadeus
of Sardinia. For Annecy, the home of Madame de Warens, our young Jean
Jacques, sent thither by a Roman-Catholic curate, sets out on foot. The
distance was but one day's walk; which one day's walk, however, the
humor of the wanderer stretched into a saunter of three days. The man of
fifty-four, become the biographer of his own youth, finds no loathness
of self-respect to prevent his detailing the absurd adventures with
which he diverted himself on the way. For example:--
Not a country-seat could I see, either to the right or left,
without going after the adventure which I was certain awaited me.
I could not muster courage to enter the mansion, nor even to knock,
for I was excessively timid; but I sang beneath the most inviting
window, very much astonished to find, after wasting my breath, that
neither lady nor miss made her appearance, attracted by the beauty
of my voice, or the spice of my songs,--seeing that I knew some
capital ones that my comrades had taught me, and which I sang in
the most admirable manner.
Rousseau describes the emotions he experienced in his first meeting with
Madame de Warens:--
I had pictured to myself a grim old devotee--M. de Pontverre's
"worthy lady" could, in my opinion, be none other. But lo, a
countenance beaming with charms, beautiful, mild blue eyes, a
complexion of dazzling fairness, the outline of an enchanting neck!
Nothing escaped the rapid glance of the young proselyte; for that
instant I was hers, sure that a religion preached by such
missionaries could not fail to lead to paradise!
This abnormally susceptible youth had remarkable experiences, all within
his own soul, during his sojourn, of a few days only, on the present
occasion, under Madame de Warens's hospitable roof. These experiences,
the autobiographer, old enough to call himself "old dotard," has,
nevertheless, not grown wise enough to be ashamed to be very detailed
and psychological in recounting. It was a case of precocious love at
first sight. One could afford to laugh at it as ridiculous, but that it
had a sequel full of sin and of sorrow. Jean Jacques was now forwarded
to Turin, to become inmate of a sort of charity school for the
instruction of catechumens. The very day after he started on foot, his
father, with a friend of his, reached Annecy on horseback, in pursuit
of the truant boy. They might easily have overtaken him, but they let
him go his way. Rousseau explains the case on behalf of his father as
follows:--
My father was not only an honorable man, but a person of the most
reliable probity, and endowed with one of those powerful minds that
perform deeds of loftiest heroism. I may add, he was a good father,
especially to me. Tenderly did he love me, but he loved his
pleasures also; and, since our living apart, other ties had, in a
measure, weakened his paternal affection. He had married again, at
Nyon; and though his wife was no longer of an age to present me
with brothers, yet she had connections; another family-circle was
thus formed, other objects engrossed his attention, and the new
domestic relations no longer so frequently brought back the
remembrance of me. My father was growing old, and had nothing on
which to rely for the support of his declining years. My brother
and I had something coming to us from my mother's fortune; the
interest of this my father was to receive during our absence. This
consideration did not present itself to him directly, nor did it
stand in the way of his doing his duty; it had, however, a silent,
and to himself imperceptible, influence, and at times slackened his
zeal, which, unacted upon by this, would have been carried much
farther. This, I think, was the reason, that, having traced me as
far as Annecy, he did not follow me to Chamberi, where he was
morally certain of overtaking me. This will also explain why, in
visiting him many times after my flight, I received from him on
every occasion a father's kindness, though unaccompanied by any
very pressing efforts to retain me.